1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a labeled resin bottle, and, in particular, to a labeled resin bottle which affords an acceptable bottle strength even with reduced resin bottle thickness, and which provides a reduced amount of source resins therein to thereby provide reduced environmental impact.
2. Description of the Background
Resin bottles, noted for their relatively light weight and strength against drop impact, have been widely used for bottles for containing shampoo, rinse, various detergents, cosmetics and food. These bottles are, however, bulky after being emptied, and consequently disposed bottles account for a relatively large portion of wastes and present a serious environmental problem.
To address this problem, intensive efforts have been made for reducing and thinning of resin bottles to thereby reduce the amount of source resins used therein as well as the volume of disposed bottles. While thinning and weight reduction by reducing the base weight of the resin bottles can be attained to a certain extent by technical efforts in molding or processing, such thinning and weight reduction causes the strength of the resin bottles to decrease. Thinning and weight reduction of the resin bottles, for example, for shampoos, rinses or detergents results in lowered buckling strength, which causes undesirable deformation of the bottles during filling of the contents, during transportation or storage in a stacked manner, or during use thereof. These disadvantages have prevented resin bottles from being thinned or reduced in weight to a desirable level.
It has been considered that resin bottles might be further thinned and reduced in weight, while accepting a reduced buckling strength, in order to be used as a substitute for a standing pouch. Standing pouches currently available exhibit excellent volume reduction after use but are poor in rigidity of the barrel portion thereof, so that such pouches still suffer from various problems. For example, they are unbalanced and very inconvenient to handle when the contents thereof are transferred into other containers such as other resin bottles, wherein special compartments or reinforcements for cartons are required for enclosing or packaging thereof for storage and/or transportation. Thinning and weight reduction of the resin bottles to a base weight level of the standing pouches can, however, considerably reduce the drop impact strength and buckling strength, which may even ruin the self-standing property. Unfortunately, no success has been achieved in developing resin bottles which successfully cope with the foregoing problems in conventional standing pouches and which can be substituted for the self-standing pouches.
Thus, a need exists for a labeled resin bottle which can successfully withstand reduced bottle strength while reducing the base weight of the resin bottle to facilitate volume reduction at disposal. More specifically, a need exists for a labeled resin bottle unlikely to deform by virtue of large buckling strength during filling, transportation or storage in a stacked manner, or during use thereof. A need also exists for a labeled resin bottle which exhibits excellent handling to a level suffient to replace the conventional self-standing pouch and which exhibits an appropriate buckling strength and drop impact strength.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a labeled resin bottle having placed and fused thereon a label having a specific range of tensile elastic modulus.
It is, moreover, a specific object of the present invention to provide a labeled resin bottle containing a resin bottle and having a label placed thereon and fused therewith, wherein the resin bottle has a value of W/(V2/3) within a range from about 0.1 to 0.5, wherein W is a base weight thereof, and V is a fill-in volume, provided that when the value is about 0.1 or larger and smaller than about 0.3, the bottle has a major thick layer consisting essentially of a polyolefinic resin having a stiffness of about 5,000 kgf/cm2 or below, and wherein the label has a tensile elastic modulus of about 5,000 to 30,000 kgf/cm2.